CQ9 Gaming Wonderland Slot Review & Free Play

Wonderland: Wind the Watch and Climb Toward 3,000x Rewards

CQ9 Gaming doesn’t have to spell out where Wonderland borrows its cast from, but you'll probably recognize the blonde girl, the grinning cat, and the fellow in the oversized hat the moment the five reels load. 

The pocket watch moonlights is a wild that multiplies wins 3x to 5x, the White Rabbit hands over free games you pick yourself, up to 100, and across 243 ways, it all climbs to a 3,000x max win potential.

My base game opened with hits landing anywhere from about half my bet up to roughly 8.5x at best. The trouble was the rhythm. One spin would pay, then nothing for the next dozen, and the gap wobbled from three spins to fifteen at its worst. I never settled into a stretch I could lean on.

Watch the reels long enough, and you'll notice the wilds don't all pull the same weight. The regular watch, forever muttering "I'm late, I'm late," turns up on reels 2 and 4 and fills in for any symbol. At the same time, the Super Wild only shows on reel 3, and it does more than stand in. Picture bells building left to right with reel 3 the missing piece. A regular wild there pays you flat. The Super Wild closes the line and multiplies the whole win by 3x, 4x, or 5x.

The tempo-changer in my session was a bonus game trigger. Three White Rabbit scatters from the left set it off, and then you choose your own round from five characters, anywhere from 5 up to 15 spins. I took the grinning cat's ten. 

Once inside, the cast turns into extended symbols on the middle reels, growing upward when they join a win and opening up extra positions on the grid. One spin came in thick with sevens, the watch wild filled the gap, and the cat stretched up the middle to carry the round to around 150x my bet.

Overall, the theme brought back some memories, and the game has all the necessary ups and downs to lure me in. Taken as a whole, though, my playthrough landed mid-tier and never showed the potential to push further.